Ultralow-Power Reconfigurable Computing with Complementary Nano-Electromechanical Carbon Nanotube Switches

In recent years, several alternative devices have been proposed to deal with inherent limitation of conventional CMOS devices in terms of scalability at nanometer scale geometry. The fabrication and integration cost of these devices, however, have been prohibitive and/or the devices do not allow smooth transition from the conventional design paradigm. To address some of these limitations, we have developed a new family of devices called "Complementary Nano Electro-Mechanical Switches" (CNEMS) using carbon nanotubes as active switching/latching elements. The basic structure of these devices consists of three co-planar carbon nanotubes arranged so that the central nanotube can touch the two side carbon nanotubes upon application ofa voltage pulse between them. Owing to the unique properties of carbon nanotubes, these devices have very low leakage current, low operation voltages, and have built-in energy storage to reduce computation power, resulting in very low overall power d...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ASPDAC
• Authors: Swarup Bhunia, Massood Tabib-Azar, Daniel G. Saab
• Keywords: Alternative Devices, ASPDAC 2007, Carbon Nanotubes, Conventional Cmos Devices, Hardware